Charbax writes: While Archos current "Archos 5 Internet Tablet with Android" is a 4.8" WVGA Tablet hardware that runs Android 1.5 and soon 2.0 with the full Google Marketplace Experience (according to rumors), users of last year's 4.8" and 7" Archos Linux Tablets have been complaining that Archos firmware updates of its proprietary embedded Linux OS were too rare and added too little of the requested functionality. Under pressure from hackers demonstrating jailbreak methods, Archos has just now officially released the open-source Special Developer Edition firmware based on Angstrom Linux generated from a customized open embedded build for last year's Archos 5 and 7 Internet Media Tablets. If many talented developers join the community of Archos hackers to make software for this new Archos SDE firmware, Android, Angstrom Linux, Maemo Mer, Qt and Ubuntu Linux could be expected to run smoothly on it soon. Which could make it the ultimate pocket Linux Internet Tablet for Linux hackers. Installing Archos new SDE firmware permanently disables DRM playback and voids the warranty. The Archos 5/7 Internet Media Tablets are running on a 600mhz ARM Cortex A8 processor, with 60GB to 320GB of built-in hard drive storage and powerful hardware acceleration for 720p video playback and even HDMI output. The advantage of this open-source firmware working on last year's model is that the 250GB 4.8" Archos 5IMT Tablet now sells for $199 at Amazon.com and the 160GB 7" Archos 7IMT version is $209 and those are to be found even cheaper on ebay.

They've always been compliant in publishing the GPL'd source that they use or modify, but they're releasing this for the wrong reasons. One person on the archosfans forum (archilles) published code to jailbreak this model and get access to all the plugins, without publishing the details. Others have been very forthcoming with the internals they've reverse engineered.

Archos' response has been to put out an Angstrom Linux distribution, while wiping the DRM keys from the device. Even though they are distributi

Comon, it makes sense for them to void the warranty and disable DRM when officially allowing jailbreak. Third party hackers with bad code could make software that actually could brick or otherwise permanently harm the hardware. Archos should not be responsible for more than how consumers use their official firmware.

With time, the open development could though provide very stable ways to run Android, Maemo Mer, Ubuntu and more. At some point it would be considered safe to install those third party install

Actually, since they lock the boot0 and boot1 (bootstrap stages) and the recovery kernel, it would be very difficult for somebody to permanently brick their Archos device. As for overheating, I imagine the processor has thermal protection that would keep it from frying itself.